Compromise Repudiated

• Committees of Correspondence formed communication• Tea Act (British East India Co.)• Forcing colonists to pay Townshend Act• Boston Tea Party• 1774 The Coercive Acts

– Port Bill– Government Act– New Quartering Act– Justice Act

• Quebec Act 1774

1st Continental Congress

• First meeting in Philly September 1774• Declaration of Rights and Grievances• Demand repeal of Coercive and Declaratory Act• Economic retaliation with non-importation agreement• Continental Congress deemed illegal assembly• Blockade of American trade, Gen. Gage suppress dissent in

MA

2nd Continental Congress

• Gage orders seizure of Patriot armories• 20,000 militiamen safeguard supply depots• April 18, 1775 redcoats dispatched to Concord• Minutemen step in at Lexington and attack• After losses at Breed and Bunker Hill, Congress creates

Continental Army• Moderates passed petition of loyalty to the king• Patrick Henry/John Adams win passage of Declaration of

Causes • King declares them all traitors• Lord Dunmore of VA organizes white and black regiments of

loyalists

Independence Declared

• T. Paine’s Common Sense ignites the flame• Scots-Irish joined the cause on religious grounds• July 4, 1776, Congress approves a Declaration of

Independence• “All men are created equal”, “life, liberty and the pursuit of

happiness”, “consent of the governed”• Individual liberty, popular sovereignty, and republican

government with independence new values of the nation

Trials of War

• Great Britain = more money, men and Indian support• Americans = militarily weak, good leadership, homecourt• Howe seizes NYC, Washington retreats to Valley Forge• Howe wants surrender, not destruction• Washington wants to draw them from the coastline• British goal, isolate New England• Battle of Saratoga, turning point, alliance w/France• Borrowed gold from France• Baron von Steuben to the rescue

The Path to Victory

• French want revenge• Treaty of Alliance of 1778• American access to supplies and money• War unpopular in Britain, high taxes• Parliament repeals Tea Act and power to tax colonies• Wants return to pre-Sugar/Tax days, Congress rejects• Spain helps, wants Florida back• Cornwallis takes SC• Marquis de Lafayette convinces naval troops necessary• Cornwallis surrenders at Yorktown• Treaty of Paris signed 1783, Independence granted

Sore Loser

• “Knavery seems to be so much the striking feature of its inhabitants, that it may not in the end be an evil that they become aliens to this kingdom.”– King George III